I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Two years ago I had never seen a Kubrick movie. I always thought that he was one of those directors that only pretentious film people liked, and only so that they could sound pretentious. I was wrong, Stanley Kubrick is amazing. The ending of 2001 still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and unless I plan to start an aggressive regimen of self-medication, it probably never will. The bottom line is that it just doesn't matter. If all that movie was was people walking around with weird gravity, and spinning spaceships set to classical music, I'd be happy to watch all 148 minutes. I think that's what makes Kubrick such a great director. His puts imagery before all else, and that's the way it should be done.

Don't get the idea that he can't write dialogue because he was one of the best in the business. If you've seen any of him movies then you'll know what I mean. Here are a few of my favorites in no particular order.

1. "You jerk, you clown! Come on, clown, sing us a chorus from Pagliacci!"
2. "I'm Spartacus!"
3. "Here's Johnny!"
4. "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
5. "You had best unfuck yourself or I unscrew your head and shit down your neck!" (I think I just like the word unfuck. I should try to use it more often.)Altogether, not too shabby. Anyway, now for the real reason that I decided to write this post. Last night I saw The Killing. It's a film noir about a racetrack heist gone wrong, and It's everything that a film noir should be. It's got a hard boiled criminal, a seductive femme fatale thats easy to hate, and violence. Oh, the glorious violence. At one point they even shoot a horse with a sniper rifle. On top of all this, It's all put together in a seamless story line that constantly plays with time. It's probably not the best way to put it, but in a way, it does pulp fiction way before Tarantino was even born. Even If you're turned off by three hour costume epics and floating embryos in space, this is the film for you. I don't want to over-hyper it, but I honestly can't recommend it enough. If you only take one piece of advice from this blog, take this one. See this movie.